Bears coach Ben Johnson’s message this week hasn’t been subtle.
Minutes after the victory Sunday: “We’re -behind the eight ball here,” he said.
On Monday afternoon: “We’re looking to piggyback on that performance here and go for our first road win here this week,” he said. “We’re road underdogs already.”
And on Wednesday morning: “We’re still looking for our first road win,” he said, “and we have yet, obviously, to win two games back-to-back.”
Winning on the road is a discrete challenge — one that quarterback Caleb Williams needs to meet. That didn’t happen last year. In his career, Williams is 1-8 on the road. His sole win came in the season finale, when Packers starting quarterback Jordan Love couldn’t finish the game because of a hand injury.
Williams’ four-touchdown performance against the Jaguars last year in London was technically a home game and was played in front of a pro-Bears crowd. In true road games, Williams has gone 183-for-306 for 1,821 yards, 11 touchdowns and five interceptions. His 81.9 road passer rating since the start of last year ranks 33rd out of the 42 quarterbacks who have thrown at least 100 passers as the visitor.
Since the start of last season, no team in the NFL has scored fewer road points than the Bears’ 143. The Bears are last in the league with 4.27 yards per play and 5.1 yards per pass on the road. Their 3.9 yards per carry is tied for fifth-worst.
The game Sunday in Las Vegas offers a prime opportunity for growth. Or, if things go poorly for Williams, more of the same.
The biggest challenge in a road game is noise before the snap. The Bears are ready for Allegiant Stadium to be raucous, even though they’re aware that it might be overrun with Bears fans. They’ve put in hand signals and other ways to communicate on a silent count, the way they did for the Week 2 game in Detroit.
“You better be preparing for the worst-case scenario — ‘Hey, we can’t hear, we need to operate,’ ” offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. “And then within the game, if there needs to be an adjustment made, that usually happens.”
The Bears were encouraged by the fact they didn’t commit a single pre-snap penalty or use a timeout in their 17-point win against the Cowboys on Sunday. At Ford Field, though, they had two false starts and had to call one timeout at the line of scrimmage.
Doyle said the Bears were focused on running a clean operation in practice.
“That stuff gets cleaned up during the week and we go have good days, and then you go out on Sunday and you’re thinking less at the line of scrimmage,” he said. “You’re just going and playing, you’re in flow.”
Williams feels that flow during the week, too, as Johnson installs the Bears’ game plan. With each passing week, Johnson wants to cater his plan of attack as specifically as he can to his opponent. That only works if Williams has mastered the basics.
“It’s just getting into a flow, understanding what’s been working for me,” Williams said. “When I get out of [Halas Hall], it’s studying how to study. Like I said many times with [Johnson], it’s him being able to have the patience with me, and have the patience with everybody, to be able to get exactly what we’re trying to get out of it.”
To that end, Johnson can put more on Williams’ plate than the previous regime did.
“There’s a certain part,” Williams said, “where you just start getting a better understanding of the offense and what we’re trying to do.”
On Sunday, it’s trying to win on the road for the second time in Williams’ career.
“The standard is the same, and the process is the same,” Doyle said. “We still continue to expect him to prepare for this week and go out and play well on Sunday.”
